This video recreates the remarkable story of a four-year grassroots struggle by women in Andhra Pradesh, India, to ban the sale of state-supplied alcohol (arrack) in their villages. When Women Unite combines dramatic reenactments with testimony from the women themselves, as well as interviews with other activists, government officials, and even liquor dons (including the infamous "arrack emperor"). It follows the government's introduction of tiny, inexpensive plastic packets of arrack, in 1982; the mid-eighties boom in sales; village protests (fueled, ironically, in government-sponsored literacy classes); large-scale district demonstrations, and the all-out statewide ban on sales of arrack that took effect in 1995. Most of the story is told from the perspective of one participant, Kotamma, but it succeeds in making manifest the inextricable links between politics, economics, and daily life. It is at once a tale of gender relations and feminism, democracy and political protest, and the potential conflict between the economic interests of the individual and the state.-I.B./L.T.